That would be nice, if it were true. But it isn't.
Those are the stories that everybody likes though, a bit like the kid with a 25c fishing rod out-fishing adults with 100's of $ worth of gear.
But in practice, most progress in most fields is made by insiders, one tedious bit at a time.
I'm not discounting the work of insiders, but their role is typically to tame the wilds first explored by the outsiders.
Academia has turned into a social game that is painful, and where the rewards are terrible (unless you're in CS I suppose). I think post-WW II has solidified the cult-like feeling of place, and also the increased the number of kooks. This contrasts starkly with the PR that is put out: hermits seeking truth.
It's generally hard to put this point across, since most people don't see the ground details, and the whistle-blower costs are rather high. I've previously found posts by Mark Tarver (creator of Shen) on c.l.l and on his blog to be informative, though.
Life, I fear, is no different than lord of the flies, except that the characters are rather a bit more polite.
I guess that CRISPR requires extensive research and planning to target genes, pick out restriction enzymes, make gRNA, etc etc, but that's all freely available through public resources like the NCBI. When it comes to taking advantage of a global supply chain and centuries of incredible innovation, we are really standing on the shoulders of giants. And how long will it be before someone takes advantage of that low barrier of entry? History says: "not long."
Still, like Ian Stewart said in his "Letters to a Young Mathematician", math is an inverted pyramid - when a problem is solved, it leads to more branches to be solved. So maybe breakthroughs are possible from a determined amateur.
One of the better examples is the theory of continental drift, now known as plate tectonics. The suggestion goes back a while, though it was a German meterologist, Alfred Wegner, who made the first serious proposal in 1912. He was rejected by a large part of the geological establishment, and died without seeing his ideas accepted. But the evidence mounted, both of the record that drift had happened (fossils, geological structures, magnetic reversals), and most importantly, a mechanism and sufficient time both made apparent by radioactivity and radioactive decay. By the 1950s the age of the Earth was known to be 4.5 billion years, and by the mid 1960s, Wegener's theory was geological fact.
It's now considered the central concept of geology, by at least one account I've seen, which is quite a feat.
Naomi Oreskes, recently known for her work on the disinformation campaigns against tobacco, lead, asbestos, CFCs, and now CO2 regulations, Merchants of Doubt, wrote several papers and two books on this subject in the late 1990s and early 2000s, specifically about the history of science aspect, and the long rejection (and eventual acceptance) of the theory. Recommeded reading.
I don't disagree with you on academia, though there may be reasons for that as well.
Now that is depressing.
Newton, likewise, was in the university when he made his breakthroughs, IIRC.
Let's not forget that while all the pictures of Einstein are of an older professor, he was quite young when he made his biggest contributions, as was Newton. They weren't "establishment professors" or something because they were too young!
It has been argued, btw, that nowadays too much background is necessary for people to make breakthroughs so young.
If we use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn, most progress is in periods of "normal science" and most breakthroughs involve a "paradigm shift".
One of the hardest things to learn, for example, is a foreign language. If the language is drastically different from one's mother tongue, then it generally takes adults about 10 years of casual study, or three years of intense study. I think this qualifies learning a second language as an outstanding achievement. Many adults try and give up, and the vast majority never progress past fluency to native-level (partly for lack of trying). By many objective measures too, it's a difficult task; I have probably stored many dozens of thousands of unique pieces of information in my brain related to my chosen language of study. Languages are complex in ways we don't even know we understand; Clifford is a big red dog, not a red big dog.
And yet, for the most part, every single person ever born learns language. Even people born with severe cognitive disabilities generally succeed at learning language.
So while I accept there is a strong correlation between genetics and measures such as IQ, I really do find it hard to believe that there is anyone who is truly incapable of learning basic calculus, or Python, or how to play the guitar. In practice, it doesn't seem this way, but every time I think about this issue I can't help but consider that out of a sample size of 1 billion people randomly born in China, pretty much 1 billion of them successfully learned Chinese.
Well, I've read many very convincing arguments that it is (including statistics pertaining to how children perform in school, with which I have my own problems, but which nonetheless need to be accounted for), how have you found that it is not?
We all have a fairly similar brains, some people's are organized slightly more efficiently for certain tasks, but that doesn't mean they're more efficient for everything, in fact it is quite like likely the opposite. Additionally, the brain is incredibly plastic, so you're not completely stuck with the architecture you have.
Do you have a source on this? There's the case of childrens' IQ varying over time, but it appears to stabilize once people reach adulthood. Are there actual records of adults' IQ going 110 -> 120 -> 90 without some highly botched test involved?
> Second, IQ is a very specific measure, it basically only deals with how good you are at performing symbol manipulation in working memory.
This is not really informative without expanding on IQ's correlation to other things and how important something like this is to a given person when multiplied on their entire lifespan. IQ seems to be fairly relevant to being able to quickly solve certain styles of problems - I would say that's pretty significant.
> We all have a fairly similar brains, some people's are organized slightly more efficiently for certain tasks, but that doesn't mean they're more efficient for everything, in fact it is quite like likely the opposite.
If there's such a thing as being more or less efficient at something, there's enough variation that there will be cases where one is efficient in a good combination and one is efficient in a bad combination. Such a difference will matter for a sufficiently competitive environment.
Unfortunately, I generally found that while there's a very large amount of people who don't believe that IQ is important, most of the good and sourced arguments seem to be on the other side and I'm scrambling to find any solid rebuttal on the subject.
I.e., https://www.gwern.net/iq
To the extent that you end up deriving your pleasure and livelihood from abstract symbol manipulation, IQ is important. IQ does matter a lot when you're first learning to do something, but as you master tasks the importance drops. A study on the correlation between chess performance and IQ showed that IQ only predicted chess ability in novices.
I agree that some people have natural proclivities that better match the structure of society. That is an unfortunate side effect of diversity under a fixed system.
I am not arguing that IQ isn't important, but is possible to improve it (regardless of our knowledge as to the process) and beyond a certain basic level it is much less important than creativity - a fact that is only going to become more true with computer automation.